#like to me as an atheist/agnostic im like. hearing that something i dont even think is real is why u hate me as a person is so insane

[bellamygate]

the thing that gets me abt religious ppl is they'll demand u respect their religion & that religion hating your existence but they won't respect ur right to be like yea my belief says god isn't real so thats a dumb reason for hating other people or ye ok then ur god is homophobic thats kinda shitty they go APESHIT like. it goes both ways? like they can say i hate gay ppl bc of my religion but when a gay person says well i dont respect that religion bc it doesnt respect me its ww3. I'm not walking on eggshells for people who are too quick to condemn me to hell

[flagellant]

Okay so. Sorry for the length here.

i used to think that atheist just meant that i dont believe in anything right?? But ive been following you and bones for long enough to know that thats not all it is cos that the ppl that claim that title are mostly annoying and also assholes.

i just dont believe in anything. And i was raised by a witch that was raised by a witch and so on. Like, i dont believe in anything but i also dont believe that theres any more proof that theres nothing than there is that theres something, yk?? And for me personally, i just dont care. Like a god or whatever could introduce themselves to me tomorrow and if they arent gonna or cannot improve my situation immediately i simply do not care about their existence.

i didnt realise that the majority of ppl that call themselves atheist were generally exactly as narrow and close minded as any religious extremist group. Thats genuinely fkn frightening wow.

i enjoy your blog so much cos even tho i dont believe in anything i truly think that having beliefs is overall a good and helpful thing and i learn a lot about what different ppl believe and how to be more like. idk ig accommodating?? To those things. i like learning about what ppl believe in cos i cant prove its not true, right?? All information is good and useful information. And whatever somebody believes in is a part of them so knowing and respecting it is just basic if you care even just a bit about them.

But im not just here to tell you about what youve taught me and shit i also wanna ask a question....if not atheist, what should i call myself?? Like in situations where i need to or care about explaining my position on these things?? Like i dont believe in anything but i also dont believe that theres any more or less proof that im 'right' than any religious person. Also, i was raised the way i was so ive seen magic and when i was small at least 30% of my friends were probably ghosts of some kind and ik that probably means something to a lot of ppl but it doesnt to me and even if its actually important i just dont care. Like ik that theres a lot going on its just not got anything to do with me. So what do i call that?? Is that agnostic?? Cos the way i understand that (which ig is probably wrong) is that the person believes in something they just dont have enough info to decide on what. Thats not me. So if i must give it a name what would you say i should call it?? Please and thank you.

First of all thank you for your thoughtful response!! It's always good to hear that sometimes I get listened to lmao. That said, I think a lot of the issue here might be miscommunication--atheist isn't like, a dirty word or poisoned concept. From what I can tell that you described, it fits you well. Apathetic atheism is pretty prevalent and to be clear these weirdos getting mad at me are best defined as antitheistic atheists--people who don't believe in the existence of higher powers and are against the idea of such in others.

It's admittedly a little tricky in your case specifically. Depending on exactly how the apathy is, agnostic might be a better fit for you, but at that point I'd just suggest you use the word you feel most comfortable with identifying yourself. Don't forget that you don't need to justify yourself to others when it comes to something as personal as this. So long as you aren't hurting people just do what you want.

[thetwistedrope]

How exactly do I have a chat with a deity? I'm pretty new to all this and have been agnostic for awhile but idk, been questioning a lot of stuff. I really wanna try to form a connection and try this. But what exactly do I do to hear something from them? I shouldnt expect a sign or message to believe something is real but my mind will keep telling me that if I dont see or hear anything its not real. I dont mean this in a bad way just I guess lost and wanna have a sign in something

You may benefit from flipping through the FAQ. there are different links that discuss various aspects of deity communication and how to communicate with them.

In general, i think its setting yourself up for failure to only think they're real if you get a sign from them. Not even getting into the difficulties in discerning whether signs are Actual Signs vs. your brain drawing irrelevant connections.

Unfortunately a lot of the work does come down to dealing with those doubts and determining what to make your practice despite any doubt you feel. I have experienced all sorts of stuff that i thought was real, but also ended up feeling more atheist than polytheist. I feel like the doubt is always kinda gonna be there, and we all just figure out how to work around it. Getting signs vs. not getting signs doesn't ever quell that fear, ime.

That's probably not a very helpful answer, but its an honest one.

[apollodankaciyorum]

if its okay can i ask you a question about turkey/people from turkey, its the term 'racializated' used there? its something uhm that is taked into consideration there? let me explain you, im from argentina, my mom is a black brazilian women and my dad just like i dont know 70% of my class is what people from usa for example call 'brown' latinos, like dilan for example of skam es, i and many poc people call those people instead of 'brown', 'racializated' many of them feel and me included tbh+ 1/

+feel the term is not really correct or many friends feel uncomfortable with it so they rated 'racializated', im not sure if you speak spanish there is this person @/haluami they is a indigenous person who wrote very good texts about this topic there is one about racializated people, and basically society put you down because of your skin color, traits, and / or ethnicity, so i can't help but wonder if thats the case of yousef, but im not turkish so i understand concepts change+ 2/

+depends on the country, culture, etc i understand all of that, so i have a lot of doubts because i dont want to break the privacy of course of the actor of yousef but i wonder if the character 'take' stuff about him or if they are statments in the show itself, i dont know, the poc term itself have some stuff people agree or not, its all a very complicated situation i still believe the show treatment to non-white males is bad i dont know but i will hear and see others opinion the 'white washing'

...

well first of all, I want to say that I’m not an expert on these issues, but I also think that I can answer your questions to some extent, at least I will try my best. and I hope I don’t offend anyone, please call me out if I do so (that’s for my fellow citizens of turkey) so here I go: (sorry it turned out to be so long)

1- I haven’t heard the term “racialization” before, so I looked it up and I realized that I know what that is, just I wasn't familiar with its name. From what I get, it means ascribing stereotypes on people about their races. So if that’s what you mean, then sure, we have this in turkey unfortunately. but i’m not an expert on sociology and other sciences regarding this topic, so any other Turkish person could heard this term, just not me.

2- Turkey is an ethnically rich country, I don't know if you know the historical developments but this is the shortest way to address this, we have a lot of different cultures here, but not as much as the times before the WW1. Nowadays, there are Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, a small amount of Rum (orthodox christians whose descendants are from the Byzantine Empire), Laz (similarly their descendants are from the Pontus Rum Empire which was located in the northern region of Turkey, but they are mostly Turkish nationalist muslims rn) people and other small communities of different cultures. well I'm rambling lol :))))

3-well some of these people accept these “racialized” prejudices when they are not offensive (from what I get at least) for example some of Laz people accept that most of the Laz people have some familiar facial features or some Kurdish people joke about how their uncle/aunt is younger than them due to their family structure etc. but mostly this racialization occurs in an offensive way like calling Kurdish people terrorists (bc of PKK, a Kurdish (terrorist) military group -- this is a way too controversial topic, so I won’t be mentioning this again, I don’t want to talk about this, sorry) or denying Armenian Genocide (again, this is a controversial topic too and interestingly recent although this issue regards the events during and after WW1) so to answer your question, yes there is racialization in turkey.

4- about yousef: well I watched sana season on February 2019 so I can’t remember all the details about him being from Turkey. I just remember he went to Turkey at the end of the season and I kinda remember that he wasn’t a muslim although his family practiced Islam, but I’m not so sure so I’ll just assume I remember correctly. 

5- Yousef isn’t a man of color. there are darker skinned Turkish people for sure but having a lighter skinned Turkish actor to play a Turkish character is NOT white washing. because there are lighter skinned Turkish people too. I don’t really know what comes to mind when you (I mean non-Turkish people) think about a Turkish person, but from my perspective, I can’t really draw an average Turkish person for you. there are caucasian looking Turkish people, there are mongloid looking Turkish people, heck there are afro-Turkish people too. So, yep Yousef is not white-washed. He’s not even white. AND I certainly call that he’s too white to be considered as moc. but I’m not an expert, just an ordinary Turkish woman. 

6- Most recently, Turkish youth tend to leave practicing Islam and instead become atheist or deist or agnostic. I can guess why, though I’m not sure if I should say it but you can search it from google, pretty sure you can find the answer :) So, Yousef being an atheist/not Muslim is a really good rep for Turkish youth bc I’m sure that most people assume Turkish people are %99.9 faithful muslims.

7- However, I can assure you that Yousef does not reflect any racialization happening in Turkey. I wouldn’t want a Norwegian internet show talking about these issues too, but I would really like if Druck (German SKAM) dwelled upon these issues since there is a big Turkish community (I’m talking about a near million in number, maybe more) and there are huge issues of/regarding Turkish people that could be reflected in national tv, and I would like to see a more politically active/woke Turkish character (in a Jonas sense) in Druck (because since 2012-2013, the amounts of politically active youth is increasing more than ever, bc what’s happening rn in Turkey -again, you can just take a look in Turkish news- ) but assuming from the appearance of Ismail Inci (new gen Druck character) this is not the case, one can only hope for deeper (by deep, I mean not just this goofy guy who only talks about kebab or girls or Turkish/German rap) Turkish characters though :(

8- I don’t know much about the actor but he sounded fluent in Norwegian so I can assume that 1) he was born in Norway or 2) they moved to Norway when he was younger. and from that, I can guess that he’s not familiar to racialization as much as a Turkish person living in Turkey and that could be the huge reason why Julie and the crew didn’t give Yousef a chance to dwell upon these. 

9- and I know I told you this, but if someone else tries to read this whole thing, Yousef is not the Turkish version of the name, it’s Yusuf (both u’s are read staccato) and I don’t know why his name is Yousef instead of Yusuf.  

wow, I didn’t expect this to be a giant, but I hope I answered your questions. and I’m not a Spanish speaker (although I want to learn but my only source is Duolingo bc I'm broke) I won’t be able to follow your blog recommendation. I’m really sorry for taking this long and writing this long. Thanks for seeking knowledge about us though, it’s not something I usually encounter with and it felt validating and good. So thank you too! Have a nice day (or night? it’s nighttime here)

[automatismoateo]

Christianity has fucked me to hell and back (no pun intended) via /r/atheism

Submitted April 05, 2019 at 02:52PM by Aspenisbi (Via reddit http://bit.ly/2Z0AH4K) Christianity has fucked me to hell and back (no pun intended)

I'm not actually an atheist if I'm being honest, I fall more towards a spiritual/pagan agnostic. But anyways.

I live in Tennessee, right in the middle of the bible belt. There is, I shit you not, a church on every corner of every street. About 2/3 of these are southern Baptist and the rest are either Protestant, Lutheran, or Catholic. My parents aren't very religious, mostly because my mom was forced into Catholicism as a kid and my dad just fucking hates church.

My mom told me that when we first moved down here (I was 3 months old lolol) she met the neighbors who seemed nice, but when she said something like "Oh my God" she would get lectured that she "shouldnt be saying that at all, let alone around kids!" And how she took the lord's name in vain. My mom was also on a walk one day when a (fucking prick, absolute asshole) man shouted at her and said "Hey, come help me do this!" I think it was some sort of lawn work. When my mom pretty much said "I dont know who you are, fuck off" the guy came back with "Women are supposed to help do chores around the house, so come over here" to which my mom hastily left.

Now fast forward to when I'm in elementary/primary school. I know how to talk at this point, obviously, and I repeat the phrase "Oh my God" and the amount of kids who got on my ass for that is insane. I got yelled at by kids who were 6. What the fuck?? I was asked if I went to church in which I replied no, and was lectured by 6 year old on how I was going to hell if I didnt go to church and how I'd suffer if I didnt go to church. I was 6 fucking years old and not only did these kids tell me constantly I was gonna die, but that I'd eternally suffer in hell if I didnt repent? What's wrong with their parents? It got so bad I was scared to go to school and say the wrong things and I would end up getting badly bullied from what I remember. I even had parents suggest in both elementary school and middle school that I was going to hell if I didn't go to church.

Time skip to 3rd grade. I start hanging out with these girls who are HEAVILY Christian. There were about 5 girls I'm talking about here with 2 of those being in my immediate friend group at the time. We all went over to sleep at my friend's, we'll call her K, house. K and her parents are also very religious, prayer before each meal, church every Sunday no matter what kinda people. After dinner and shit we go down to the basement where we are all sleeping for the night. My two best friends at the time, A and S, were making fun of me for God knows what and K and her best friend were talking about something else. We ended up talking about Harry Potter, and K said "My mom doesn't let me read those, she says they're against Christianity." I was so confused?? I said "From what I've seen they're fine. Theres nothing remotely against God in the books" she shrugs it off and we end up talking about Christianity, and the question of "do you go to church" is brought up again. I say no again, although I did consider my self catholic at the time because my mom technically was. They end up crowding around me and telling me how terrible I am for bot going to church, how I'm going to die a horrible death and suffer for all eternity. It got to the point where they, and I'm seriously not kidding, they put a good 6 feet between me and them. I started crying obviously. It was so terrible. My friend S finally came over and gave me the whole, "I'm sorry OP, but you're our friend and we dont want you to go to hell. We cant hang out with someone who's going to hell." And this is when I made a decision to start going to church occasionally with A and S. I really tried. They even talked about baptizing me at one point, but in the end something didnt sit right.

In 6th grade I finally started to try one more time. I was 11 now and I was started to feel attraction to both girls and boys. I also didn't feel like a girl anymore, in fact I hated my feminine features and name and body. I started self harming and I was just so scared because I had researched what the LGBT community was. I saw what church goers did to these people. After maybe about 6 Wednesday sessions I stopped coming to church with them and flat out told them everything. I'm bisexual, I'm transgender, im an atheist, the whole shebang. They freaked out on me, calling me a sinner, a fake, an asshole for coming to church with them when I never meant it (which I really did, I really did try). I was heartbroken to lose my closest friends, but this was just the beginning. Word quickly spread in 7th grade, and even though I was planning on coming out in 7th grade with help of teachers, I wasnt the only person telling everyone. My old friends spread it like wildfire. Before I knew it I was sectioned off from everyone else. I recieved death threats through Instagram. These 2 kids made a Christian Instagram and tried to preach to me, and harrassed me more when I politely told them to leave me alone. I was called queer, tranny, faggot, every name in the book.

But I was free.

I was no longer held at the strings by people who couldnt think for themselves. I ended up breaking up with my girlfriend towards the end of 7th grade, which was good for both of us seeing as I was so unstable that I think I might have went too far in certain scenarios, which I profusely apologized for later on and we're now on decent regards. I dropped out of public school for online school for my 8th grade year (present) and I recently started Testosterone, which I'm almost 6 months on.

I'm finally free. And although I do get seriously triggered to the point of tears and panic attacks when I see things about the Pope, the church, etc, I can finally recover. Hearing stories in this subreddit is very important to me. I know that I'm not alone. I'm learning independence now and it's great. I'm trying to look for a job (although I must say not many places hire at 14) and I'm an A and B student again! It was scary, I did things I probably shouldnt have, but in the end I got out of it, I survived the bullying and death threats. I finally feel truly alive.